Greeks This term we were looking at Ancient Greece in history. We made timelines about the Greeks and we loved exploring Ancient Greece on Google Maps!
Science Week We had an action packed Science Week this year. First, we did the Cell Explorers experiment to extract DNA from a banana! It was a lot of fun learning about DNA and using scientific equipment. We also made and presented projects on famous scientists – lots of people researched female scientists such as Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie. We also looked at heat and how some materials are insulators and come are conductors of heat. We designed and made cup warmers using the best materials to keep heat inside the cups to keep drinks warm. We looked at materials and reactions too which was a lot of fun – we made Elephant Toothpaste and made a rocket using Diet Coke and Mentos.
Art We spent a lot of time this term looking at sculptors. We then went and made our own clay heads using different techniques. When they were dry, we painted them. We think they turned out fantastic! We also sketched and painted one of our favourite Christmas characters – The Grinch!
Maps This term we spent some time looking at maps. We explored the world on Google Maps an used it to help us make a birds eye view map of our school.
Spelling We have been using fun ways to practice our spellings in school.
Cavan There was great excitement in Room 6 when Cavan won the Ulster Championship! On that Monday, we made Cavan decorations for our school and we wore our Cavan tops. We were super excited on Tuesday when Chris Conroy visited our school. Darragh even treated us to a few traditional tunes on his mandolin!
Projects We have been working hard every week on different research projects. Some of the topics we have researched include famous scientists, Croke Park, Irish presidents, Christmas around the world and Ancient Greece!
Irish Festivals We worked in school to research ancient Irish festivals in pairs in our pods. Some of us learned about Samhain, some learned about Bealtaine and others learned about Imbolc. We made presentations using Google Slides and then we all took turns to present what we learned to the class.
Recount Writing The past few weeks we have been working really hard on our recount writing. We looked at a lot of examples to find out what makes a good piece of recount writing. We found out that recount writing is always in the past tense and always in the correct order. We learned that in recount writing we tell about things that happen to us or to others. We learned that we tell about who was there, what happened, when it happened, where it happened and why it happened in that way. We also learned that great recounts use a lot of ‘time words’ especially at the start of paragraphs. We worked hard on the writing process – we made a plan, wrote our first draft, edited it and finally typed them on the Chromebooks to publish them. We really enjoyed recount writing! We have published some of our fantastic pieces on the school website.
Bee Bots As part of Maths Week 2020 we worked in pairs in our pods to make different mazes and games for our Bee Bots. Bee Bots can be coded to move in different directions by pressing the buttons in the correct sequence. We learned that a Bee Bot moves 15cm in one movement and turns 90o (a right angle) in one turn. This meant we had to carefully measure and mark our designs into a 15cm square grid. Some people made mazes to solve, some made maths board games and others made maps that can be used with story books. We hope to be able to play each other’s game one day when we can share among different pods!
Predictions In September, we worked on the predicting comprehension strategy. We read the books ‘Brother Eagle, Sister Sky’ and ‘The Silver Swan’ by Michael Morpurgo. We worked in our pods to make predictions before, during and after reading our books. We learned that we should use the word ‘because’ in our predictions and use evidence such as the title, the pictures or our own knowledge when making predictions.
Maths Week We played a lot of different dice games for Maths Week in our pods. We found that using dice is a really great way at learning our tables. One of the games we played were 501 Not Out. In this game, we rolled two dice and multiplied the two numbers together. We added this to our tally. We took it in turns to roll the dice, multiply and add it to our tallies. The winner is person who gets to 501 but if you go over 501 you are out! We also played a game called Pig. In Pig, you roll a die. You add the number on your die to your tally. You can take as many turns as you want and ‘bank’ your tally points at any time BUT if you roll a 1 on your die, you lose all the points that you haven’t banked! This means that with each roll there is a 1 in 6 chance that you will lose your points! This game was a lot of fun! We also looked at Maths Week TV some days. There were some interesting shows about times tables, number patters, maths tricks and calculator tricks.